


Underground

by maximumneptune



Category: Original Work
Genre: Caves, Claustrophobia, Disappearance, Gen, Ghost?, Hypnosis, Hypnotism, Original Fiction, That isn't how hypnosis works, Underground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 15:13:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12192378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximumneptune/pseuds/maximumneptune
Summary: On an adventure down into a local cave system, Austin, Janie, Barry, and Ash find more than they bargained for when they fall through the cracks. One by one, they find out that they may never see the light of day again.





	Underground

**Author's Note:**

> First work on AO3, and it's an original story. That's probably setting me up for failure, huh?

Janie's hands scraped against the rough sides of the tunnel as she crawled along, her eyes trained on her barely visible friends in front of her.

"See anything yet?" she whispered. They had been exploring the local cave for hours, but so far, all they'd discovered was that Barry was slightly claustrophobic and rocks were really uncomfortable to crawl on.

"Not even a new branch of the tunnel, and quit whispering! It's creepy with the echo in here," Austin said from his position at the front. "And why am I leading, again? This was your dumb idea, Ash."

"Because you have the best sense of direction," Ash replied. "Soooorry I didn't know the cave system got all narrow."

There was a clattering noise that came from the front of the line, and then the small amount of light that Austin's flashlight provided disappeared. The swish, swish, swish of denim against stone stopped.

"Austin?" Barry asked.

"Dammit, I dropped the light. One sec," Austin said. Everyone went silent to allow him to focus on finding their only light source in the dark caverns.

"Do you guys hear that?" Barry asked, after a moment. "It sounds like wind."

"If that's a fart joke, I swear to god," Janie warned.

"No wait, I hear it, too!" Ash agreed. Janie closed her eyes to block everything else out and listened. Sure enough, she could hear something that sounded like a light draft.

"Haunted. Cave. Weird sounds, unexplained lights. What part of that wasn't a warning not to come in here?" Barry whined.

"I'd offer to let you leave, but your butt is in my face and I'm not backtracking just so you can get yourself lost!" Janie told him.

"Austin?" Ash suddenly said, sounding alarmed. The name bounced around in the tight space they all shared. There was no answer.

Janie leaned against the wall on the right side of the tunnel to try to see past her friends. Ash laughed nervously.

"Okay, Oz, very funny! Come out of whatever side tunnel you're hiding in before Barry has a heart attack!"

Ash fumbled with the finally located flashlight and managed to light up the cavern. A collective gasp replaced the bated silence that had thickened the air around them.

Austin wasn't there, and there was nowhere he could have gone.

What happened next happened so quickly that Janie couldn't even process it properly. Ash crawled forward a few inches, presumably looking for Austin, and suddenly vanished into thin air, leaving the flashlight behind. Barry yelped and scrambled backwards, bumping into Janie and hitting his left shoulder against the wall, which he seemed to go THROUGH. Janie stared in shock at the dark, empty space where her friends had been.

Her stomach dropped as the wall she was leaning on became nothing.

\---

Austin rubbed his temples, trying to regain his senses after the fall. His head buzzed like he'd had too much to drink--or like he'd whacked it against a stone wall, which was probably what had actually happened after he fell through the floor. The floor that had been solid only a moment before he had plunged straight downwards, like he was on a slide.

Austin's eyes were beginning to adjust to his surroundings. The fall down the...chute?...had taken him to a fairly large area of the cave. The natural room was about as large as the living room at his parents' house, except it was mostly circular. He was propped up with his back against a wall.

**SNAP**

He squeezed his eyes shut as a flash of light seared into them, and a loud cracking sound filled the cavern.

Upon opening one eye cautiously, it was apparent that something had appeared in front of Austin, in the middle of the room. He opened both eyes all the way to get a better look at it.

A campfire? But it was so weird looking...

Instead of a natural orange flame, the heartily crackling fire was the deepest blue color Austin had ever seen. It was darker than the ocean had been the time he went scuba diving. His eyes were naturally drawn to the flickering blue flames that lit up the cave around him, and no matter how long he looked away for, he kept going back to gazing into the fire.

Aside from the oddly soothing color of the flames, the smoke that the spontaneous campfire released didn't smell like wood smoke. As it reached him, Austin found that no matter how he tried to describe the smell, he couldn't quite find the right words.

_Cloying?...but in a good way...and metallic at the same time?...like if bread and chocolate and metal and the sky were all the same thing..._

Whatever it was, it was making Austin more lightheaded with every breath he took. Between the deepness of the dancing fire and the smoke, his thoughts seemed to be slowly melting away. He was so out of it that he didn't even react or take his eyes away from the fire when the woman appeared on the other side of the room.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she asked, her voice hushed and melodic. Austin hummed his agreement.

"Sometimes I have a hard time believing I can make things this wonderful," she said. Austin looked up in surprise, but only for a moment before the fire drew him back in. He was briefly worried that his fixation on--

_Blue...so deep...nothing else..._

His worries were burned away.

"You made this?" Austin asked the woman, who laughed and walked a quarter of the way around the fire to sit, cross-legged, where Austin could see her. The woman's hair was long and brown, and it could have just been the reflection, but it looked like the bottom was the same blue as the fire. She was wearing a simple, white, long sleeved shirt with blue patterns on the shoulders, and black pants. Her eyes sparkled in the light, and her laughter echoed in Austin's mind, mixing with the smoke and the blue that filled his vision.

"I did. Doesn't it make you happy? All of your worries, just fading away."

Austin nodded and smiled. The blue campfire seemed to grow in size, filling his whole vision so he couldn't see the walls anymore. The intensity of the smoke and the warmth increased. It took a moment before he realized the fire hadn't grown, he had simply moved closer to it without noticing that he had.

"The movement of those impossibly deep flames is drawing you ever further into them. The deeper you go, the more relaxed and tired you feel. Your eyes are becoming heavier and heavier with every flicker," the woman said in a soothing, quiet tone. Austin's eyelids drooped, but he managed to keep them open for the sake of seeing the fire.

"I can see you fighting to keep your eyes open. You don't want to stop seeing the fire, do you?"

Austin shook his head slowly and managed to utter a quiet "no." That wasn't the only reason he was fighting to keep his eyes open, though. Something was bothering him, a thought that he could barely grasp. He finally latched onto it for long enough to capture some of his attention back from the magnetic blue flames.

"Wait," he murmured. "My friends...I need to find them..."

"They're safe," the woman replied in that same alluring voice. Austin felt himself becoming lost again as the room lulled him back into his trance. "You're safe as long as you're here. Why would you want to leave?"

That was a little bit concerning. Austin fought off the mesmerism of the fire once more. The woman seemed to notice.

"As you resist, you become more and more relaxed, and the more you fight, the more tired, relaxed, and weak you get. You can't keep your eyes open any longer."

Austin's eyes finally drifted shut, and he sighed sadly, all of his prior concerns forgotten.

"Do you want it back?" the woman asked him.

"Yes," Austin replied, eagerly. His own voice was so far away.

"You can see a light in the darkness of your closed eyes. As you take deep breaths, it gets bigger and bigger, and the more you breathe, the more you can see the beautiful fire again."

Austin took several deep lungfuls of the smoke from the fire in front of him and smiled happily as an image of the flames appeared to him. It was just as perfect as the real thing.

"You're still so, so tired, and now you're getting ready to sleep. My voice, the smoke, and the fire will lead you further. I'm going to count backwards from ten. Each time I say a number, you will take another breath in, and let it out in the space between the numbers. When I reach zero, you will fall into a deep sleep, but you will still be able to hear, respond to, and obey everything I say. Ten..."

Austin followed the woman's instructions. The scattered remains of his thoughts dropped away with every number.

"...one...zero."

\---

Barry landed with a dull thump onto what felt a lot like sawdust. With a POOF, a cloud of dust billowed up around him, like he'd just kicked a large pile of sand. At least it had cushioned his fall.

"Ash? Ashley?" he called. "Janie? Austin?"

Barry choked on a mouthful of the dust that was now suspended in the air. The stuff was everywhere, and whatever it was made of, he was getting dizzy from breathing it in. With his hands over his nose and his mouth clamped shut, he scrambled to his feet and stumbled blindly through the dust cloud in a futile attempt to find a clean pocket of air.

His screaming lungs eventually got their way, and he couldn't keep from taking a few gasping breaths. The particles were so small that he could barely feel them as they entered his body, but he still coughed reflexively.

_Is it getting warmer in here?_

An odd warmth was spreading through Barry's chest and arms, and he had a feeling it was connected to the dust. It felt like he'd just had something hot to drink. With a start, he realized that the dizziness and the warmth weren't entirely unpleasant.

Barry shook his head and covered his nose with his hands, fingers locked together as a makeshift mask. Maybe he could filter out most of the dust as he searched for a way out of the cavern he'd landed in.

_Otherwise, I'm going to suffocate and die alone down here, in the dark._

That thought was entirely unhelpful, considering the fact that it made him hyperventilate a little bit, when he was trying to AVOID breathing. He was trapped. He had no idea how he'd even gotten into this part of the cave, his friends were gone, and--

"You're safe," a woman's voice told him. Barry just about jumped out of his skin as a figure appeared in front of him, obscured by the dust which really should have settled by then. Despite her sudden appearance, Barry found her words strangely reassuring.

"Who are you?" Barry asked, hoping she could hear his muffled voice through his hands. To his relief, the dust cleared away from him and the mystery woman, just enough so that he could see her face and let his hands fall back to his sides. He regarded her with confusion when he saw that she appeared to be...disappointed?

"My name is Corinne," the woman replied.

"Why...how...what are you doing here?"

Corinne smiled. Her blue eyes sparkled. She seemed to have a serious theme centered around the color blue. Her eyes, the tips of her brown hair, and the shoulders of her white shirt were all the same color. She was barefoot.

Barry was startled yet again as he realized that the only reason he could even see her eye color and the other minor details of her appearance was that she seemed to be radiating a small amount of light.

"I was banished here long ago. It's awfully dark down here, and I get so lonely..."

Barry's head was drooping down to his chest. While Corinne had been talking, the dust had subtly converged on him until he was breathing it without any inhibitions. He blinked and shook his head to try to wash away some of the sudden sleepiness. He gasped as his vision cleared.

Every single speck in the air around him was shining with iridescent rainbow light. The colors shifted and shimmered as the dust swirled lazily around him. Barry's eyes unfocused as his brain tried and failed to make sense of the individual particles. The warm, just-drank-hot-chocolate feeling returned, and his legs buckled under him. He landed heavily on his knees, although he didn't feel it at all.

"Watch," Corinne said quietly. Barry nodded, enjoying how the movement blurred everything together even more. He couldn't even remember what he'd been doing before.

"You were worried before, right? A little bit scared of the caves?" Corinne asked him.

"Yes," Barry sighed.

"But now you just feel relaxed and happy. Let the colors lead you to sleep," she said, her voice smooth and reassuring. Barry smiled slightly as his eyes started to close.

"With every breath, you become more and more tired and willing to fall asleep. Your body is so heavy. If you tried to move, you'd find that you can't, and a new wave of warmth passes over you every time you try."

Barry tried and failed to lift his arm, and more comforting heat flowed through him, just as she said it would.

"Let your eyes close all the way and all your muscles relax. You won't fall over. When you hear a sudden, loud noise, you'll fall completely into a deep trance, but you'll still be able to hear me, and you'll feel just as good as you do now. Do you understand?"

"Yes," was Barry's almost inaudible reply. His eyes were closed, but he could still see the colors moving in his mind.

A loud snap jolted him awake for just a moment, before the world tilted and he was falling...

\---

"Anyone?" Ash yelled. Her voice echoed in the dark chamber she had fallen into. Unwanted tears pooled in her eyes, and she bit her tongue to chase them away.

Her phone was a comforting presence in her back pocket. With shaking hands, Ash pulled it out and pressed the button to illuminate the screen. A new fracture ran over the glossy surface of the glass, but it was otherwise functional.

Two terrible words in the top left corner killed her hopes of texting the others, but she had plenty of battery left. Maybe she could find where she fell and climb back out.

A quick swipe and a tap activated the flashlight, and Ash breathed a sigh of relief as the formerly pitch-black cave was illuminated. She walked the perimeter of the large room she was in, trying to find the hole that she had to have fallen through.

After three trips around, Ash was getting frustrated. Against all logic, there was no tunnel or hole.

Ash pressed her back up against the stone and slid down until she was sitting, her knees pulled up to her chest and arms draped over her legs. She fought tears once again.

Something in the wall across from her caught the light of her phone.

_That has to be it!_

Ash scrambled to her feet and dashed across the cave towards the glint she had seen. She shined her flashlight directly on...

_Some sort of gemstone?_

Embedded in the cavern wall was a dark blue gem. Ash locked her fingers around it and gave it a tug. It shifted in its setting within the wall. One more pull freed the stone.

Ash gaped at the size of the blue gem. It was almost too big to hold comfortably in one hand. It didn't look natural at all. Ash didn't know all that much about rocks, but she was pretty sure natural stones didn't have perfect facets like this. And it was so heavy!

But it wasn't the freedom from the caverns that she had hoped it was. Ash sniffled and furiously wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. Her heart was pounding faster as she realized that she might be trapped down here forever.

Was it her imagination, or was the gemstone glowing? Its weight seemed to be increasing by the second, dragging down not just her arm, but her whole body. And she was so exhausted...

Ash's legs gave out and she fell to the ground in a daze. The gemstone was definitely glowing. Her eyes gravitated towards the gently pulsing blue light that she held in her hand. Its steady rhythm drew her in, driving away her panic and--

Ash mustered all her strength and hurled the stone across the room.

The soft light faded as the glassy rock shattered into pieces against the wall. The pressure on Ash's body lifted, and she shook her head to clear...whatever that had been.

Whatever it was, she'd dropped her phone as it happened. Luckily, it had landed with the flashlight pointed towards the ceiling, so she found it easily.

As Ash picked up her phone, the light shone across the room and illuminated someone who definitely hadn't been there before.

A scream was torn from her lips as Ash scrambled backwards, away from the mystery woman who had just appeared in front of her.

The woman wasn't wearing shoes, for some reason. She had on plain black and white clothes and, Ash had to admit, had a pretty cool brown and blue hairstyle.

"Why did you destroy it?" the stranger asked. Ash found that she was ashamed to have provoked the sadness in the woman's voice.

"Who are you?" Ash replied, ignoring her odd reaction. She stood up.

"My name is Corinne."

"I'm Ash," Ash said, after a beat of silence. The woman smiled and nodded.

"A nickname, I think."

"Um, yeah. It is." Ash didn't know why she was telling the woman--Corinne--any of this. She just hoped she could figure out what was going on.

"Why did you destroy it?" Corinne repeated. "The gem." Ash's brows furrowed. There had been no one in the room with her when she'd thrown it, but Corinne WAS standing amid the shards of broken crystal.

"It was...toxic, or something. It did something to me that went away when I broke it," Ash replied. The woman shook her head.

"Not toxic," she said softly.

The phone flashlight went out. Ash frantically tapped the button to turn on the screen, but as the hard light of the phone returned, albeit with less intensity, another light source illuminated the room.

Ash gasped as she saw that hundreds of gems just like the one she had shattered were now embedded in the walls, ceiling, and ground. All of them were pulsing gently, lighting up the room with a soft blue glow. The heaviness that Ash had felt before was slowly returning. She fought it as fervently as she could and managed to remain standing.

"How?..."

"You denied yourself happiness before, but I can't bear to see a guest feeling such fear," Corinne told her. Ash squeezed her eyes shut. She was in darkness once more, but at least the light was shut out. Corinne's voice carried across the cavern to her.

"I've met two of your friends."

Ash opened her eyes in surprise, then shook her head and closed them again as the glow from the gemstones overtook her.

"You have?" she asked.

"Yes. I visited the two young men that ventured down here with you."

"Are they okay?!" Ash asked, her voice louder and more frantic than she had intended it to be. Corinne hummed sadly.

"They both let me help them, as I wish to help you." Her voice had gotten softer and more soothing as the conversation had gone on.

"What?"

"Your friends were scared and concerned for their safety and that of your group. I allowed them to relax and forget their worries. Don't you want that for yourself?"

"What are you talking about?" Ash demanded. "I want to get out of here!"

"I'm afraid that's impossible," Corinne replied sympathetically. "The tunnel you fell through closed after you."

"Then how are you moving through the caverns?!"

Corinne laughed melodically.

"I'm an exception. I don't quite pay mind to what is and what isn't a solid wall."

"So I'm stuck down here?" Ash asked, tears threatening to spill over for a third time.

"I'm sorry, Ash. You won't be able to leave, but I can help you to be comfortable here. You won't be scared, or hungry, or homesick."

Ash hated to admit that she was considering it. She was sure that she normally wouldn't even entertain the possibility, but something about the cold air of the cave, Corinne's voice, and her growing terror over being trapped underground made the offer seem like the best choice.

"I don't..."

"It's okay," Corinne said. "Open your eyes."

Slowly, Ash obeyed. Darkness gave way to the hypnotic light once more, and the pressure descended upon her with every pulse. The weight was too much to hold up, and she sluggishly sank to the ground. Her hand came to rest on a gem in the floor, and she traced her thumb over it, enjoying the smooth texture.

Ash marveled at how the longer she allowed the blue light to fill her vision, the calmer she became, and the less her heart pounded.

"That's it," Corinne said. "Let yourself go deeper." Ash sighed contentedly as her eyelids started to be affected by the heaviness.

"Any remaining negative feelings are being absorbed into the gemstone that your hand is resting on. Your breathing is getting slower and steadier and your eyes are closing as it's all drained away."

Ash nodded almost imperceptibly as all of her fear and anger was channeled into the gem. Her eyes closed all the way, and she relaxed completely, allowing the wall against her back to hold up her weight.

"You're going to let me help you, right?"

"Yes," Ash whispered. She would do whatever Corinne suggested. The instructions hadn't failed her so far.

"I'm going to count backwards from ten. When I get to zero, you'll fall into a trance. It will feel like sleeping, but you'll be able to hear and respond to my words."

Ash let herself be dragged down by the weight on her limbs and the counting. She was calm and happy as Corinne reached zero and she faded away.

\---

Janie kicked frantically, trying to dislodge her right foot from whatever it was stuck in. The rest of her body had emerged into a large room of the cave system after she fell, but her foot had stayed trapped in the wall.

She took a rest for a moment, allowing her head to rest on the cool, rough ground, and tried to assess the situation.

There wasn't much to assess. It was pitch-black, and her foot was lodged in a cave wall. That was all there was to it.

"Austin?" she called. "Hello? Anyone?" Her echo answered her, but no one else did. She tried to wiggle her foot out of her shoe to see if it would free her from the wall. It didn't work. The shoe was firmly clamped down onto her foot from the pressure the crevice exerted on it.

Her leg was falling asleep. Janie propped herself up on her arms and shifted to try and get blood flowing back to her trapped limb. Somehow, that made it worse. Her right foot was tingling intensely, and the numbness was only spreading up her leg.

"Crap," Janie muttered. She reached down to massage some feeling back into her muscles, but froze when she felt something odd where she had expected her pants to be.

Instead of the rough denim that her pants were made of, Janie's hand grazed over what felt like soft bandages. As she recoiled and strained to see through the darkness of the cave, the familiar sensation of an extremity falling asleep started in her fingers, where she had touched the mysterious bandages that appeared on her leg.

Janie shook her hand vigorously to keep it from going numb. Slight pressure was spiraling down her hand. Instinctively, she grabbed the offending hand with her left. Sure enough, more bandages, and as soon as her other hand touched them, the tingling and pressure bridged over to it.

_What's going on?!_

Janie could just make out her arms in the darkness. White and blue bandages were twisting around her and there was nothing in sight that could be wrapping them. She clawed at them, but her fingers had already been covered up.

"Help!" she cried.

Even with Janie's struggling, the bandages had wrapped all the way down her arms and started in on her chest. She felt a light pressure on her chest as they covered the area above her heart. As they continued their descent, Janie realized with a start that everywhere that had already been mummified was radiating with a subtle, comfortable warmth, like a heated blanket.

_Magic bandages that wrap themselves and make heat?_

Janie's mind had begun to wander, and her efforts to free herself lessened a little. The heat that was soaking into her bones brought her back to winter days, when her house would be cold and she'd curl up with a bunch of blankets and--

Someone was standing over her.

Janie partially broke away from her daydream and regarded the woman with a sort of dazed interest and confusion. The bandages were down to her knees, and the warmth was only increasing, driving her further into sleepy reminiscing.

"Who're you?" Janie asked, her words breathy and slurred. The woman, who seemed to glow to allow herself to be seen in the dark of the cave, smiled at her.

"Someone who wants to help," she said.

Janie's trapped foot was released from its rocky confines. It scraped along the wall and hit the ground with a thud. She vaguely registered that she could probably stand up and throw off the bandages, but her body and most of her mind didn't want to move a muscle, for fear of losing the comfortable warmth to the cold of the caves.

"Allow your thoughts to wander away from you. The heat is driving away any worries or fears you have."

"Wait," Janie said, struggling to form a cohesive sentence out of the thought that was slipping away from her. "What...what're you doing?"

"Don't worry. Let yourself fall asleep."

Janie nodded and smiled sleepily. Her mind was covered in a layer of fog, and she didn't mind at all.

"The bandages are going to disappear, but the warmth will stay and continue to increase. As it does, you'll get even more tired than you are now, and you can close your eyes if you want."

Janie felt the slight pressure over her body fade, but the warmth remained and intensified as the woman said it would. Her eyes drifted shut.

"Can you still hear me?"

"Mmmph."

"When I count down from three, the heat will vanish for just a moment. You'll be impossibly cold until I snap my fingers and the relief of the warmth will return. When it does, you'll fall into a deep trance. You'll still be able to hear what I say."

Janie's peaceful expression became concerned as the woman started to count. All of the heat was pulled out of the room, and she shivered violently and uncontrollably as her comfortable winter day became hypothermia. She tried, but couldn't make a sound.

**SNAP**

Janie almost cried with relief. The warmth came back in full force and drove away the biting cold. Everything else fell away, too.

Before she disappeared completely, she thought she heard the woman whisper something.

"It gets so lonely down here."

 


End file.
